Fire Emblem Three Houses (Spoiler Thread)

I'm interpreting that as you saying that SS would still be seen as a significantly flawed story even if it were the only route. Is that correct?

No idea, maybe this user meant that SS was not tragic in the slightest? If SS was the only story it would be for Dimitri and Khalid, but other Fire Emblem games also wasted a lot of potential with their settings like fates, Awakening and Radiant Dawn.

Edited by Tropetalker on Feb 27th 2021 at 2:20:35 PM

Another thing that really hurts Silver Snow is that a bunch of it's monastery exploration script is also reused from Verdant Wind. It's no wonder rumors began quickly spreading back in the early days of the game's release about how it was probably created with the sole intention of giving players the option to not side with Edelgard in the Black Eagles route (and yes, the rumor doesn't account SS is the default path).

It's really just guessing at this point. But like I said, part of why the Edelgard drama doesn't really work on SS is that she somehow fails to remain an important character post-timeskip outside of the whole "I started a war" business. And getting attached to her enough to feel the betrayal is sort of optional (and if you do, chances are you'll end up on CF anyway). That would stay true even if we didn't have other routes to compare.

From the setup, you'd expect El to be a Recurring Boss. What did the route do with her post-timeskip encounters instead? First one, she just leaves. Second - doesn't even happen because that whole chapter was cut. Then she dies after one fight, and Thales takes over.

It's weird that they left that for last, though. I can see why CF would have a higher priority considering how it's accessed, but why leave SS for last?

Yeah, but Crimson Flower is the secret route you only get after jumping through hoops to join up with the Flame Emperor, which exists in addition to the three default routes. Being the bonus route is why it's so radically different to the rest, to the point that even the shared maps swap the player and enemy positions.

You've got it backwards - it's Verdant Wind that reuses exploration from Silver Snow.

Silver Snow was actually done first, which makes sense, since it's Byleth's story; it sort of serves as the scaffolding for the others. Dimitri's story, Azure Moon, is a remix of Silver Snow (which, ironically, gives us the most information about Edelgard). Verdant Wind is more a rehash than a remix of Silver Snow, but it's salvaged by the presence of Claude, and also a final battle that is actually foreshadowed and built up to; I suspect that the devs devoted slightly too many resources to Azure Moon, which meant that Verdant Wind couldn't get the same amount of love an attention. Crimson Flower, the bonus route, was the last to be added; it was always intended to be there, but I still strongly suspect that it was the most severely impacted by deadlines.

I meant in terms of monastery exploration dialogue, which data-wise goes like CF>SS>AM>VW, except there's some evidence that at least part of the SS bit was put in later (namely, there's a conspicuous empty slot between it and AM, which only makes sense if Gronder II not being on SS was a mid-development change).

And VW may be a rehash of SS chapter-wise, but it still has two extra animated cutscenes. While AM apparently spent its cutscene budget on Chapter 11 (incidentally, that cutscene was apparently added after the non-CF Part I finale cinematics).

In a game explicitly built around reusing resources, the fact one route's story was written first does not necessarily mean all of the data related to it was also implemented first.

One thing that can be said for certain, though, is that somebody on the dev team really liked the Blue Lions...

Edited by YnK on Feb 27th 2021 at 8:07:42 AM

It goes both ways for the most part. The examples I shared however were clearly written with VERDANT WIND in mind (it's in all caps 'cause I wrote SS earlier for some reason):

All of these comments assume Judith is gonna stay in the monastery from here onwards and that Claude's around in Constance's case. This stands out as Leonie actually has dialogue about how Judith didn't join them in SS.

Chapter 17 then reuses dialogue from AM and VW's buildup for gronder, which is bizarre since that chapter was more or less skipped because plot.

The random comment from an NPC about "clipping the Black Eagles's wings" is also really jarrying and in very poor taste given most of your crew was from said house to begin with and your endgame battalions will likely be bought from the Empire. (why CF is the only BE branch which prevents you from buying battalions belonging to the enemy is anyone's guess.)

Then there's also this from Chapter 20:

Which is very weird because the alliance became a wreck after Gronder and is the reason why Byleth becomes the God Emperor of Fódlan easily at the end .

Shamir also comments how both the Empire and Kingdom are a mess right now and conveniently leaves out the alliance. Again, this makes far more sense in Verdant Wind.

Lastly and also from Chapter 20:

Lysithea casually revealing to Byleth she was experimented in the context of Silver Snow is really jarrying for 2 main reasons: the line doesn't change if you haven't seen her A-Support at that point, and Verdant Wind contains a story scene where she confides to Claude & Byleth such info after Gronder, making this mention of hers right before invading Shambhala more natural.

Edited by Blackress on Feb 28th 2021 at 12:20:17 AM

Regarding the Alliance 's strenght, the reason why Khalid wanted Byleth to become the ruler of this unified Fódlan is due to the nature of the Alliance's nobles. Their constant backstabbing, plotting to throw out one another and getting on each other's throat made in Khalid's mind the Alliande nobles impossible candidates for ruling Fódlan. Thus Byleth, a war veteran and archbishop of the continent's largest religion is chosen to lead all.

@Tambourine and Trope, Yes/no! Interpret that however you will, it was made at four in the morning.

It's even the other way around on VW, with Lysithea's A-support being locked until after Gronder.

The Alliance's fate on SS is really weird overall, because it's heavily implied even in-game that Claude survived Gronder II, but then the plot goes "oh yeah, nobody would mind if we take his country for ourselves, right?". At least on AM and CF you explicitly have his permission.

...And AM's version of Chapter 16 apparently has leftovers from SS - or VW? - that aren't even accessible on that route. (Unless this is... something else.) Really, what was reused from where probably matters a lot less when it was explicitly designed to be reused.

Yeah, and Lysithea's support even changes in VW to acknowledge she already spoke about her experiments earlier.

About that dialogue, I bet that's definitively leftovers from SS. The game would've used the chance to give Ashe more vs quotes against Blue Lions or even add new monastery dialogue about it otherwise like in Lorenz's case for Verdant Wind.

AM was the easiest to develop because it was the most like a traditional FE story.

The others were very experimental and went farther away from that, and it shows in each of them.

CF was a very controversial idea and VW was almost crossing a very dangerous bridge. SS should have been its own game, had the devs only done this route.

Wait, what was the issue with Verdant Wind?

The fact that the main lord is dark-skinned and from a country coded as near eastern in a setting based on the European Middle Ages and by the word of god, this game is historical fiction-like. He is also a foreigner who wants to end the concept of petty borders and doesn't believe in the same religion as the not-europeans. If the game was more focused on Almyra and Fódlan, the game would invoke comparisons to the real world with not Islam and not Christianity fighting each other.

The game should have gotten more criticism for some of its racist portrayal of Persia, but all what matters is that Edelgard is either right or wrong or that Dimitri is a supposive good representation of mental health issues (he isn't).

Edited by Tropetalker on Feb 27th 2021 at 12:46:57 PM

Not-Christianity and Not-Islam are also derived from worshipping the same God, which the game doesnt delve enough into Almyra to know if their God is just Sothis under a different name.

Well there is a Persian name for Sothis: Tishtrya or Tir. So the game could have made it and luckily they didn't.

You should broaden where you talk about Three Houses. While this thread has barely been able to move past Edelgard for more than a day, Claude and Almyra have been one of the most discussed topics since the game release.

x2 "Luckily they didnt"?

Itd be weirder if they didnt have Sothis, considering how in RL Siriius was associated with rain, life, sun, etc. across the world no matter how far away each religion was and no contact between them.

Excluding Agarthan inspirations since Greek-Roman and China were the only cultures to have negative connotations to Sirius alongside benign ones.

Its why no matter where in the world you are Sirius is either a Dog or Wolf Star.

Edited by OmegaRadiance on Feb 27th 2021 at 4:04:04 AM

@Tropetalker: So, let me get this straight: Verdant Wind's Unfortunate Implications are that, being the route most focused on Almyra, it depicts Almura as a racist caricature of medieval Arabian and Asian Muslim societies?

Also, if you wanted to talk about that, why didn't you try hitherto instead of moments where you give non-controversial hot-takes or meme about Nemesis? If you had time to do that, you could have broached the subject then. Or during some of the times where people wanted to get away from Edelgard on this thread, I know I tired a couple of times.

Edited by fredhot16 on Feb 27th 2021 at 4:31:57 AM

My headcanon is that some of the Nabateans ended up shaping mythologies in countries surrounding Fodlan.

Seteth: I lived in Brigid for a time when I was younger. There was an incident where I helped drive off some cattle theives, but the story has been quite exaggerated since then.

To add in my own two cents on the opinion of Silver Snow, I do believe that it's the route that really did have the most missed potential out of any other. Making it first and then just leaving it behind to not bother revising it later after making the other three is what basically doomed it. Whether this was cause of restricted budget, time limitations or just outright laziness by Int Sys is the question to me. But overall, it's also the reason why I can't hate the route.

Tbh, the route really did need more unique things. Maybe something like make Seteth a recruit exclusive to this route along with the Church faculty, some exclusive paralogue missions about Indech and Macuil where, under the right conditions, you could even get to recruit them, more info on the Nabateans (their lifestyle, their biology, their culture, their beliefs, etc.), Rhea as a playeable character and, if possible, make her the co-protagonist/lord of the route; all of this could've served as a great reason to play SS, but they instead ended up giving it not much essentially. I mean, they tried to give it one unique aspect at least by making it the only route where you can S-support Rhea, but they kinda ended up sc*****g that because of how many things they didn't properly explain/left up to interpretation regarding the pairing/relationship which ended up giving it a bad image to some people.

Does anyone know if there's any fanfics/stories out there that try to rewrite Silver Snow actually? I think even in that it gets the short end of the stick. I mean, I tried looking but the best I could find was this: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26348776/chapters/64170034?view_adult=true, and it's only like two chapters long right now.

Edited by Classics4Reality on Feb 27th 2021 at 9:59:16 AM

Shall we discuss how wonderful Hubert is then?

I watched Joe Zeija's stream and I was surprised he actually found Hubert very interesting, would have thought he would have just found him annoying. Pleasantly surprised here.

Like I said, I do have a soft spot for the scheming dark mage, or dark mages who are usually psychotic but quite helpful like Henry.

You gotta respect Herbet's dedication, if nothing else. The first support between him and Eddie would have been heart-warming if he didn't mention something about rivers of blood and ruin the mood.